We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.

This country can have no more democracy than it accords and guarantees to the humblest and weakest citizen.

But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form.

You are young, gifted, and Black. We must begin to tell our young, There's a world waiting for you, Yours is the quest that's just begun.

The colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.

When one has seen something of the world and human nature, one must conclude, after all, that between people in like stations of life there is very little difference the world over.

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives it most distinctive characteristics.